Title: The Stone Tower – Ptolemy, the Silk Road and a 2000-year old Riddle
Author: Riaz Dean
Publisher: Penguin Viking, 2022 (First)
ISBN: 9780670093625
Pages: 225
Rome flourished in the first century BCE by establishing colonies and client-states all over the Mediterranean littoral which pushed up trade like never before. They consumed spices and silk from Asia and supplied gold in exchange for them as they did not possess the items which the Asians would accept in lieu of their produce. A network of trading routes and caravanserais developed in central Asia as a conduit for the flow of trade from China and India to Rome and Egypt. This network was later christened the Silk Road and proved to be a unifier of the east with the west. It was not only trade that was carried along the road. Religion, culture, language, script, sculpture and technology changed hands. This road was thus instrumental in coining the destiny of all modern Asian societies, particularly China. This book is an attempt to solve a 2000-year old question of ancient geography about a stone tower at the exact middle of the Silk Road. Riaz Dean is an independent scholar and author. This book is the result of a solo journey the author made retracing the old Silk Road.
The term ‘Silk Road’ was coined only in 1877 by the German geographer Ferdinand von Richthofen. This was only an academic exercise as the actual route was copiously mentioned by ancient and early-medieval historians. A first century CE treatise called ‘Geographia’ by Claudius Ptolemy listed thousands of places along the Silk Road. It was he who first suggested the presence of a feature called ‘Stone Tower’ on the exact middle of the road. This was a special place high up in the mountains situated on the doorway to China’s western extremity called the ‘Roof of the World’. The book is split into three parts, the first of which explains the birth of the Silk Road, the second covers key events in history that determined the tower’s establishment at the halfway mark and the third pinpoints where the tower was actually located. The author narrates Chinese history of the second century BCE to explain how the trade route was established in the first place. Zhang Qian, a commander of the palace guards of Han empire led several missions to the west in an effort to find an ally against the hostile Xiongnu barbarians. Following Qian’s epic first mission, the Han began sending out more envoys to engage with newly found nations to the west. Other than goods to trade, they took expensive gifts for the nobles and their courts, an armed escort for protection, servants and ample supplies. For these long and arduous journeys, they needed caravans and the trade route came into being.
An overland route presents problems of its own, in the form of border protocols, brigandage and vagaries of extreme geography such as steep snow-clad hills and inhospitable deserts along the way. Naturally, the maritime spice route offered a better alternative for the movement of goods although the distances by sea were greater between the east and the west, particularly during times when the Silk Road became too dangerous. The rivalry between Rome and Parthia did not make the situation any better. The Romans controlled the maritime routes but the Parthians would not let them deal directly with the Chinese using overland routes. Rome then tried to bypass trade out of Parthia which levied heavy taxes for protection. This rivalry soon developed into full-fledged warfare that led to the doom of both the empires. Initially, silk was very costly, effectively worth its weight in gold. Even the very wealthy could not afford it, who sewed small patches of it on their clothing. Production of silk was a jealously guarded secret in China. On pain of death, no person was permitted to remove its eggs or cocoons; foreigners were not allowed near nurseries and guards searched merchants leaving China. However, paper was the most important item traded from the east, considering its impact on the transfer of knowledge through the printed word. Other forms of agriculture and technology, like cultivation of grapes, wine making and manufacture of coloured glassware travelled from west to east. Buddhism also spread along this route from India. This book describes Aurel Stein’s explorations in Xinjiang and central Asia which contributed greatly to archaeological and literary corpus of the ancient world. However, his appropriation of literary manuscripts by bribing Chinese monks was controversial.
The author’s quest for the Stone Tower fails to enthuse the reader on multiple counts. One reason is the uncertainty on the nature of the landmark. Ptolemy does not say whether the Stone Tower was a settlement, natural feature or a manmade structure. The inexactness in the suggested Ptolemaic coordinates signifies an area of 30,000 sq.km in which the Stone Tower could be found. Aurel Stein explored the regions in search of it in the first quarter of the twentieth century based on these coordinates and warned about the unreliable character of the information. Stein identified a settlement at Daraut-Kurghan in southern Kyrgyzstan as the location of the Stone Tower, because the Perso-Turkish name roughly translated to ‘a tower at the gorge’. Along with this, Dean also suggests three plausible locations – Tashkurgan in Xinjiang, Tashkent in Uzbekistan and Osh in Kyrgyzstan. Out of these four, the author selects a sacred mountain near Osh called Suleiman-Too as the Stone Tower. Unfortunately, the entire episode fails to excite the readers.
This book is an excellent source of Chinese and central Asian history and ethnic movements in the three centuries starting from 150 BCE. It describes the unsettling periods in which the Xiongnu tribes made repeated onslaughts on the Han empire which has some parallels to the ravages Roman empire encountered about half a millennium later. It also truthfully captures the domino effect created by fleeing nomadic tribes in displacing more units on their run to safety. The Xiongnu displaced the Yuezhi, who upturned the Sakas who in turn rode into India and disturbed the political balance. The book also neatly summarizes the commercial, literary and cultural interchanges across different societies along the Silk Road. The Taklamakan desert harbours many secrets of the ancient trade and its unnaturally arid climate preserves the artefacts with surprisingly little damage. A well-funded archaeological mission backed by technology is sure to unlock many treasures from the dry sands of Taklamakan. Apart from these, the actual quest to find the Stone Tower appears to be ‘much ado about nothing’. At least, Dean is not much successful in convincing the readers about the absolute necessity of the perilous adventures he undertook in central Asia looking for the tower. The book is effectively a sequel to the author’s earlier book, ‘Mapping the Great Game’ (reviewed earlier here). The book includes many photographs which would have been breath-taking had they been in colour instead of monochrome.
The book is highly recommended.
Rating: 3 Star
Title: Ashoka – Portrait of a Philosopher King
Author: Patrick Olivelle
Publisher: HarperCollins India, 2023 (First)
ISBN: 9789356993228
Pages: 356
This book is the first in a series called ‘Indian Lives’ which will be a collection of prominent personalities which will illuminate the rich, complex and contested history of the subcontinent. Ashoka stands out among all the kings and emperors of the world who held sway over the people over several millennia. He is made known to us by the edicts he carved in prominent rock faces and polished pillars spread out in his empire in which he exhorted his subjects to follow dharma meticulously and to lead a morally pure life following his example. Through these inscriptions, he offered religious freedom for all the diverse sects subject only to the contention that they respect other faiths which may differ from their ideology. This was a glowing model for later religions which was unthinkable in medieval Europe or even in modern Middle East where no opposition to the prevailing dogma would be encouraged. Also, Ashoka was the lone king in world history who was strong enough to say ‘I’m sorry’ and had had a distinctive moral philosophy which he sought to imbibe on his people. The Ashokan inscriptions containing 4614 words was the most studied piece of secular ancient Indian writing. This was tough work as the writing system did not separate words with blank spaces or punctuations. Patrick Olivelle is a Sri Lankan scholar who is currently professor at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of about thirty books on Indology and ancient Sanskrit literature.
Olivelle makes a short analysis of the salient points related to the country, its polity and Ashoka himself. The emperor used the name Piyadasi (Prakrit for priyadarshi, dear to behold) and the honorific Devanampiya (beloved of the gods) to refer to himself on the edicts; the name ‘Ashoka’ was first obtained from later Buddhist hagiographies, but the minor rock edicts in Nittur, Udegolam and Maski in Karnataka mentions the name ‘Ashoka’ (without sorrow) as well as ‘devanampiya’. The pillars on which later edicts were engraved were incredibly well polished. This superb quality of polish achieved for pillars and their capitals is intriguing because it was not repeated later. Ashoka intended the edicts only to preach morality is evident from the fact that one central aspect of the state that is hardly mentioned in Ashoka’s inscriptions is the economy. No mention is made even of revenue officers without whom taxes could not have been collected. Though a Sri Lankan, the author was educated and is working in western academia and appears more loyally inclined to western ideals than a native American or European. Without any corroborative evidence, the author credits Greek influence in moulding Ashoka’s administrative apparatus. He suggests familiarity to Greek customs and education brought on by the entourage of Greek princesses brought as wives of Ashoka’s father and grandfather Chandragupta Maurya as the reason for the expansive and Universalist vision of Ashoka’s moral philosophy.
The book makes an elucidation of the edicts and how it helped to promote literacy and fellow-feeling in the empire of Ashoka. Standardization of language (Ashokan Prakrit) and Brahmi script across most of the empire helped spread literacy across the country. Local dialects were spoken at various provinces and in the case of Karnataka, some form of Dravidian language was spoken, but the inscriptions were in Prakrit except in Afghanistan where Greek and Aramaic were also inscribed. The language, script and literacy gave a strong foundation to the new imagined community that he was trying to build in which he was the father and the people were children. Ashoka was more in contact with neighbours from the Northwest than from the South. He refers to his southern neighbours anonymously using ethnic or geographical names, but in the case of western Hellenistic regions, he refers to the kings by their exact names, suggesting better diplomatic contacts. The fourteen major rock edicts were located close to large towns at the borders of the empire, minor edicts are found at some distance from human habitations like hills or boulders, which were possibly pilgrimage sites. The pillar edicts are placed in the heartland of the empire. The author appears to be such a Hellenophile that whether it is the inscriptional techniques, construction of edict-bearing stone pillars or even the script itself, he credits the Greeks or Persians with it. For the pillars, he even suggests Egypt as a source only because Ashoka had sent a diplomatic mission to Alexandria. It seems like he does not want to ascribe originality of any kind to ancient India.
Ashoka extends great respect to all heterodox sects and to Brahmins in particular. In almost every rock edict, he exhorts others to honour them as a class. This flies in the face of left historians’ portrayal of Brahmins who were claimed to be working against the Buddhist system. Moreover, Ashoka is silent on the four-fold division (chaturvarna). He seems either not to have been aware of it or not to have thought it to be significant. The very term ‘varna’ or any of the names of the three varnas other than Brahmin are completely absent in Ashoka’s vocabulary. Even Brahmins are mentioned in the context of religious organisations and not as a social or demographic group. This contrasts with the author’s antipathy to Brahmins in his statement that ‘displacement of Brahmins from their privileged position within the social and political hierarchy was clearly one of the major consequences of Ashokan reforms’ (p.263). Further, Brahmins are always contrasted not to the other three varnas, but to wandering ascetics or Sramanas (p.57). This observation simply illustrates that the varna system was not internalized by the society. Olivelle suspects that the varna system was fabricated by later Brahmins and it was most likely aspirational and prescriptive, rather than descriptive. Non-Sanskrit inscriptions before the second century CE does not talk about varnas. The book also indicates a weakness of Ashokan dharma that might have contributed to its downfall after the patron’s demise. While Ashoka was downgrading the domestic religious rites, Brahminical texts like Apastamba’s dharmasutra and gruhyasutras which were penned at around this time were encouraging them. It served as an extension of Vedic ritual forms and Brahmin expertise into the realm of popular ceremonial that had previously lain beyond their purview. The book also includes a vitriolic attack by Buddhist monks made against Brahmins in the Anguttara Nikaya comparing them to dogs using filthy metaphors (p.242-3). Obviously, the antagonism existed on the Buddhist side too.
This book takes some effort to understand the personality of Ashoka from his inscriptions since we do not have any other source to do so. Ashoka was a penitent, but not a pacifist. We see traces of his veiled threat to use force in his message to the forest people within his territories. He never forsakes capital punishment but allowed only a reprieve of three days for the convict to reflect on his life and to give gifts as part of dharma. Ashoka never said he became a vegetarian. Pillar edict V states that ‘whereas hundreds of thousands of animals were slaughtered in the royal kitchen, now only three are killed per day’. Obviously, this will be for the king! But the author quotes a phrase ‘Saka parthiva’ of Sanskrit grammarian Patanjali and gives the meaning as ‘vegetarian king’ after slightly modifying it to ‘saka bhoji parthiva’, which is unintended in the original. However, this is absolutely stretching things a bit too far. Saka parthiva can also mean Saka king. In variance to accepted wisdom, Olivelle does not think Ashoka was an avid follower of Buddhism after the ‘initial years of conversion’. He argues that Buddhism was widespread in India even before Ashoka became a lay disciple and began vigorously supporting it. After the early years, his interest shifted to a personalized concept of dharma rather than Buddhist religion itself. He uses it as a non-sectarian religious and moral concept. Ashoka does not mention any of the central doctrinal tenets of Buddhism anywhere in his edicts. The other ideas of ahimsa and doing good to others are to be found in the repertoire of all religious sects. The author then analyses the concept of Ashokan dharma. The word ‘dharma’ was coined by Rig Vedic poets. There are no Indo-European cognates for this term in any language. Upanishads handle this only marginally. Ashoka was in no small measure responsible for dharma assuming the centrality it did in Indian history.
Olivelle does not stop to find whether Ashoka had turned puritan in his prescriptions and pronouncements on dharma. Traces of coercion in Ashoka’s methods to spread his moral philosophy are also to be doubted. Minor Rock Edict I states that before the time Ashoka turned a lay disciple, men in Jambudvipa were unmingled with gods and they were made to mingle with them by Ashoka’s striving (p.45). Within a few years of becoming an upasaka, Ashoka issues a reading list for Buddhist monks and nuns to practice dharma better. In the schism edict, he virtually threatens any monk or nun who causes dissension in the Sangha with banishment. He forbade popular festivals for the merrymaking it entailed and frowned upon even domestic ceremonies as trivial and frivolous.
Part 1 of the book examines Ashoka’s role as a ruler of the land, composer of the moral lessons and builder of the finely polished pillars. Parts 2 and 3 deal with Ashoka as a lay disciple of Buddhism and his maturing to a moral philosopher respectively and Part 4 examines his character as an ecumenist. The author is a scholar of Sanskrit beyond doubt, but readers occasionally have some discomfort on his interpretation of words used in the inscriptions. He possibly misinterprets ‘janapada’ in edicts as rural countryside (p.35) which can also mean a republic. In the section on Mauryan state, he deems ‘rajuka’ officers to be assigned to rural districts. It is debatable whether an ancient kingdom would have rural development in their radar. There can be a possible error in his interpretation of Ashoka’s Lumbini inscription in which he makes the village of Lumbini tax-free and ‘to have a one-eighth portion’. Quoting another author Harry Fawk, the author surmises that this refers to one-eighth portion of Buddha’s remains are to be interred there (p.111). But this may more likely to be a cess on some merchandise in a nearby trading post so as to form an income stream for the village. Having read the entire book, readers are mildly surprised that the author has never considered for a moment the possibility that the entire edicts might be a politician’s hyperbole on how the empire is, and should be, run? Quite plausibly, this can be the ancient equivalent of the grand manifestos put out by political parties during election time in India. The book compiles the essentials of Ashokan dharma which is condensed into: few evil acts, many good deeds, compassion, gift-giving, truthfulness and purity of heart. The emperor was also tolerant. He permitted all religious sects under the overarching title of Pashandas to reside anywhere they chose and to carry out their sermonizing with moderation. He also visited them without discrimination, offered gifts and paid homages.
This book includes a foreword by Ramachandra Guha, the general editor of the ‘Indian Lives’ series, but looks lacklustre considering it is the first step in a supposedly great journey. Olivelle also tries unsuccessfully to project modern social constructs to Ashokan rule. He believes that Ashoka wanted to create ‘a community of people to socially bind them together’ in his empire. This is said to be similar to the idea of civil religion proposed by Rousseau to create unification of communities that form a nation and suggests that Ashoka’s obsession with dharma was a manifestation of this urge. This exemplifies the conclusion that the author is not much aware of how an ancient pagan polity worked in practice. Olivelle’s comparison of Ashoka to the much later Mughal emperor Akbar and India’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru as the reincarnations of Ashoka in their ecumenism (p.274) is simply outrageous as well as ridiculous. This assertion only proves that the author belongs to the clique of historians who enjoyed the run of the place in modern Indian historiography in the post-independence period.
The book is recommended.
Rating: 2 Star
